Evacuees' return to city called premature

NEW ORLEANS -- With Tropical Storm Rita headed for the Gulf of Mexico and some residents set to return to dry parts of the city today, the head of the federal relief effort continued yesterday to question Mayor C. Ray Nagin's timeline for reopening the city while some poor New Orleanians were starting to wonder how they would ever get back home.

Much of the city still remains without drinkable water, electric power, and emergency services -- concerns that Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad W. Allen raised yesterday on NBC's ''Meet the Press."

Allen warned Nagin this weekend about tainted drinking water and other environmental contamination, Coast Guard officials said, giving the mayor test results that indicated biological and petroleum residue remained in once-flooded parts of the city.

Nagin, said Coast Guard officials, chose to ignore this. A spokesman for the mayor said Nagin stood behind a statement that said he was balancing safety concerns and the city's need to rebuild. Allen and Nagin were scheduled to meet today.

Chris Sisko, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said Rita, now a tropical storm near the Bahamas with sustained winds of 40 miles per hour, was headed west into the Straits of Florida, known as ''Hurricane Alley, and was expected to be in the Gulf, ''possibly as a hurricane," early this week. The mere thought of that had some displaced New Orleanians skittish yesterday. Once blase about hurricanes, many are now on edge, concerned even about heavy rainfall. City officials have warned that a 3-inch downpour would be enough to create problems for levees still being repaired.

But many evacuees yesterday were more worried about when, and how, they will ever get home to New Orleans.

Some have a plan. The city will let residents of Algiers, a neighborhood just across the river from the French Quarter, back into their homes today. After that, city officials will assess whether they will open parts of Uptown and then the French Quarter, a plan previously unveiled by Nagin that continues to draw criticism from both state and federal officials.

Mark Smith, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said yesterday that ''short of military action," there is nothing the state or the federal government can do to prevent people from returning to New Orleans. It is ultimately Nagin's decision, Smith said. ''That's his city," he explained. ''That's his parish." But that did not necessarily mean other officials agreed with the plan.

''The party line is pretty simple: We'd rather people not go back into New Orleans," Smith said. ''There's safety issues. There's no food, no water, no electricity in some areas. I don't know if there's any sewage available . . . . So, I mean, it doesn't seem like a real hip, happening place right now to be."

Nevertheless, it is a place that many displaced residents would like to be. Most do not want to move home for good -- not without drinking water or power. But they would like to go back in, check on their homes, and see what they might be able to salvage, just as business owners in New Orleans did last weekend and residents of other parishes have been doing for days.

But if the mayor moves ahead with his plan to reopen eight city ZIP codes for that purpose, returning some 180,000 people to the city, the same disparities that appeared in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath are likely to surface yet again, said City Council president Oliver Thomas. Namely, he said, those who evacuated on their own will probably be able to return, while those who evacuated by bus, boat, and helicopter in the desperate days after Katrina will be marooned once again, this time out of town.

''They got a one-way ticket," Thomas said, ''a one-way ticket to nowhere. And when you talk to the ones in the shelters, the ones who want to come back, their biggest concern is: How do I get back? Are the buses going to make a return trip?"

Smith said yesterday that state and federal officials are currently discussing this problem. He said such people will probably be returned to New Orleans the same way they got out: by bus. But Federal Emergency Management Agency officials said the state and city have not made any request for vehicles to transport evacuees back into reopened areas. Moreover, the agency has cautioned against such a plan, worried that returnees would face numerous difficulties.

''The challenge is, if we can get them back, where would they go? What would they do? It's the housing, the jobs, the education and schooling issues," said FEMA spokesman Dave Passey. ''What we don't want is a second wave of evacuations, where people get back into their homes but realize they can't stay there and we have to take them out again."

The lack of answers troubles Thomas. He said council members would discuss the issue at a meeting Thursday. Meanwhile, from Camp Edwards on Cape Cod to the RiverCenter convention complex in Baton Rouge and in shelters in between, some 100,000 people sit and wait. Some have decided they will never live in New Orleans again. But most everyone, especially those living in shelters close to the city, would like to get back in to at least see if they can salvage anything. And that is especially the case among those who live in ZIP codes the mayor hopes to reopen.

Denis Scott, for example, would have the option to return to New Orleans this week if the mayor moves ahead with his reentry plan. Scott, 63, lives in Carrollton, a neighborhood the mayor listed last week among those set to be reopened.

The last time he saw it, Scott said yesterday, he was wading through neck-deep floodwaters, buoyed by plastic detergent containers he had tied to his arms, and trying not to drown. He knows his home will never be the same. But he counts himself among those who do want to go home and, more specifically, he would like to reenter the city this week along with his neighbors.

''If I had a ride," said the airport shuttle bus driver, ''I'd like to do that. But nobody's promised me transportation."

As such, Scott and others here are making long-term plans to stay put in Baton Rouge, where housing remains scarce. Despite President Bush's promise that shelters would be emptied by mid-October, Smith said that will be a challenge. ''That's a lot of housing to come up with in a month," he said, pointing out that about 500,000 people are without homes, including those in shelters and those staying with friends or relatives.

The death count, meanwhile, continues to rise. Authorities reported a total of 646 deaths in Louisiana yesterday, up from 579 on Friday. Aid efforts were continuing, with more than 800,000 people now registered with FEMA, Smith said. Some survivors have begun receiving $2,000 checks from the US government while parishes are also getting help. Some $217 million has already been distributed to local governments, Smith said, with another $300 million due to arrive by midweek.

Globe staff writers Raja Mishra, in Baton Rouge, and Sasha Talcott, in New Orleans, contributed to this report.